


Devil is In

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, code for amazing, details & DNA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 00:00:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You,” John says, and blinks.</p>
<p>A nano-geography of John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil is In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AfroGeekGoddess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AfroGeekGoddess/gifts).



> a little more of the color blue for [AfroGeekGoddess](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AfroGeekGoddess/pseud/AfroGeekGoddess) with many thanks for the[ podfic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/541805) and all the beauty.

_“You imagine if I saw a field of wheat… A million million little bloody_ _edges_ _, a million lines. You could make pictures of damn anything out of them, couldn’t you?”—China Mieville, "Details"_

****

The combination (permutation) to the safe is 16-16-6. Old-school, a code he no longer needs, the tiny clicks that wear made, the faintest whorl of a killer’s print. Ecstasy.

He solves it in seconds, sends a man to a custody cell (crossbars make a chessboard of the wall--QxN!!—a capture, the palladium-congener-platinum shine of the night watch, time to smoke and not-sleep), turns once, 30 degrees, rubbing his palms (long lifeline, strong logic in the thumb, one marriage mark he’s told; why not delete that, oh.)

Oh.  John’s shoved the gun down into the blind of his waistband, asked _how, how,_ something small in his iris, a flicker not a glint, brighter and brighter until…

Look at him. Down to the helices that made the blue, that made that lick of lighter skin, a cross-hatch polymer-strong.  Light through silicon, entwined threads, a miracle.

A nanoscale geography of John. 

It’s how he sees everyone but no, not _everyone_.

Here’s a heart, striations, hair.  A nano-geography of _you._

“God’s in the detail, John,” he says, “or not god, but what’s the difference when you’re…’’

“You,” John says, and blinks (the long-and-short he needs, the word, the code that re-invents amazement.)

And he can do it too: the tilt and pitch of a solved-it mouth; in each light eye a tick of blue.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [DNA Directly Photographed for the First Time](http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/11/30/dna-photographed-for-the-first-time_n_2216552.html)   
> [DNA Photographed for the First Time, 2](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50029929/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.ULlENPWxr1U)
> 
> [Holding cell, shadows.](http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40978000/jpg/_40978252_cell300.jpg)
> 
>  QxN!!: chess, descriptive notation for queen takes knight.
> 
>  “the gust-beleaguered single spruce tree,  
> the ant-thronged, root-snelled moss, grass  
> and clover tuffet underneath it,  
> edges frazzled raw
> 
> but, like our own prolonged attachment, holding...”—Amy Clampitt, “A Hermit Thrush”


End file.
